Friday, 28 March 2014

Analysis: Delhi’s Road to Kabul Runs through Kashmir

In what amounts to the effective ending of a decade-old ceasefire
between India and Pakistan, since January 2013 violence has flared along the de
facto border – the Line of Control (LoC) – between the two in the state of Jammu
and Kashmir. With more than 200,000 heavily armed soldiers from two nuclear-armed
countries on hair-trigger alert in LoC picquets that are sometimes just metres apart,
the potential for escalation can hardly be overestimated.

New Delhi, for its part, believes that Pakistan has undermined the
ceasefire – agreed in November 2003 between the two sides – in an attempt to revitalise
armed separatism in the state. The aim, it believes, is to tie India down and
weaken its focus on Afghanistan at a critical juncture, given the imminent
withdrawal of US and NATO troops. And with India distracted in Kashmir, a
resurgent, Pakistani-supported Taliban would give Islamabad proxy control over large
chunks of Afghanistan. This, in turn, would keep the lid on the border dispute
between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and on any demands for ‘Pashtunistan’ – a
homeland for Pashtun tribes which straddle the current border.

Furthermore, a ‘Talibanised’ Afghanistan would also provide Pakistan with
‘strategic depth’ – a notion that seeks to compensate for the country’s limited
geographical depth by making available the territory of Afghanistan in the
event of a deep Indian wartime offensive. Policy-makers in New Delhi worry
equally that a Taliban-imposed imperium in Afghanistan would free up hordes of
Pakistani-controlled jihadi fighters, who could be redirected into Jammu and Kashmir.
An active LoC would facilitate this by allowing jihadi fighters to infiltrate Kashmir.

As such, it is clear that, from this Indian perspective, the Pakistan
Army needed a flashpoint to provoke confrontation along the LoC – which duly
came on 8 January 2013, when two Indian soldiers patrolling the LoC near the border
town of Poonch were killed and mutilated, and one of their severed heads taken
away by what India alleges was a raiding party from the Pakistan Army.
Islamabad strenuously denies that its troops were involved, instead accusing
India of having shot dead three Pakistani soldiers. Amidst such accusations and
counter-accusations, firing broke out between local picquets, spread to other sectors, and subsequently
drew in heavier weapons including mortars and artillery.

In turn, Indian outrage at the beheading led New Delhi to stall the
peace dialogue between the two sides, just as it was sputtering into life after
a long hiatus caused by the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai. The talks –
comprising several components addressing specific issues, such as Kashmir,
Siachen, terrorism, and trade and commerce – have made limited progress since
they remain hostage to political disruption, with New Delhi prone to suspend them
in response to any Pakistani provocation. Just as a resumption of the dialogue seemed
possible in August 2013, for example, five more Indian soldiers were killed in
another cross-border raid near Poonch. Relations plummeted again and firing along
the LoC intensified.

By the bloody standards of the LoC, however, the current firing levels
are modest. Prior to the 2003 ceasefire, Indian and Pakistani posts on the LoC
exchanged fire more frequently in a week than they now do in a year. Yet there
is concern at the recent intensification: according to figures quoted in
India’s parliament, Pakistan violated the LoC ceasefire forty-four times in
2010, fifty-one times in 2011, ninety-three times in 2012 and 199 times last
year. Predictably denying any violation, Islamabad charges India with violating
the ceasefire twenty, sixty-seven, eighty-six and 230 times in the same years.

The 776-km LoC that has witnessed such exchanges is but one section of
the otherwise largely stable 3,323-km India–Pakistan border, drawn in part by
Britain in 1947 and shaped further by conflict between India and Pakistan in
the wars of 1947–48, 1965 and 1971, which saw each side retaining the territory
it had captured. The front line was frozen in the Simla Agreement that followed
the 1971 war, when India and Pakistan agreed to respect the current position
and to ‘refrain from the use of force in violation of this line’. In December
1972, military commanders from both sides jointly delineated the LoC on a mosaic
of nineteen maps, and it has remained unchanged since then. That it has
acquired the sanctity of an international border became evident in 1999, when New
Delhi responded to Pakistan’s occupation of territory in the Kargil district – on
the Indian side of the LoC – with unrestricted (though localised) force,
including air power, in what became known as the Kargil War.

Recent months have seen initiatives to prevent tensions along the LoC from
spiralling out of control. The two armies’ directors general of military
operations discussed the issue twice by phone in October, and met face-to-face
on Christmas Eve 2013 at the Wagah-Attari border – the first meeting between
directors general since the Kargil War. The Indian government reports that this
has significantly reduced ceasefire violations.

Even so, New Delhi believes that Kashmir has now returned to the top of Pakistan’s
agenda. On 26 January, India’s Republic Day, which Kashmiri separatists mark as
a day of protest, Pakistan allowed Maulana Masood Azhar, the virulently
anti-Indian head of the banned jihadi group Jaish-e-Mohammed, to address a
separatist rally in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-held Kashmir.
Speaking by phone from Bahawalpur, his hometown in Punjab, Azhar urged renewed jihad
against India. Islamabad, apparently embarrassed, announced that Azhar would
not address any more rallies, but Indian policy-makers remain convinced that
Pakistan is dusting off its Kashmiri jihad machine.

The Indian Army, therefore, is bracing for
a renewed counter-infiltration effort on the LoC. After the Kargil War, India
built a formidable border fence, which bristles with landmines, floodlights,
electronic and seismic sensors, cameras and night-vision devices. To tackle
infiltrators who manage to cross the fence, troops further behindare deployed in a layered, counter-infiltration grid – a
gauntlet that militants must run before reaching the relative safety of
populated areas in the hinterland, where they are
sheltered by established insurgent networks and, often, a supportive
population. To target the militants in this difficult environment, the Indian
Army obtains legal cover from the much-reviled Armed Forces (Special Powers)
Act (AFSPA), which protects soldiers from prosecution for acts carried out
whilst on duty.

The alienation of the Kashmiri population from India is fundamentally
political, but feeds off the AFSPA, which has become an emotive symbol of New
Delhi’s high-handedness. Indeed, notwithstanding the success of Indian troops
in decimating the armed insurgency – current intelligence estimates put
militant numbers in Kashmir at 150–200, down from 3,000 in the 1990s – the
government has failed to consolidate this through political outreach. Blasé New
Delhi policy-makers view Kashmir as a security problem rather than a political
one, and do not acknowledge the seething resentment in the area, especially
amongst a new generation of secessionists, whose anger is directed both at New
Delhi and at Kashmiri leaders on both sides of the LoC, who have promised
independence for a quarter of a century but delivered only a fearful, militarised
existence and tens of thousands of dead Kashmiris.

If Indian policy-makers have failed to gauge the situation in Kashmir
accurately, Pakistan is equally oblivious to the popular disenchantment there with
armed militancy. The new form of Kashmiri resistance is public protest, which
came into its own during three summers of street violence between 2008 and 2010,
when dozens of unarmed protesters were shot by Indian police and paramilitary
forces clearly unprepared for this form of defiance. During those years, a new
generation of Kashmiri leaders developed street protests into a potent weapon
against a democratic and image-conscious India. A reinvigoration of
Pakistan-fomented armed militancy would seem to them like a return to the
mistakes of the past.

Pakistan would be equally mistaken if it believed that it effectively
controlled the Taliban; indeed, there is a growing realisation that it is an
unreliable and wilful proxy and that other Afghan groups must be cultivated as
well. The Taliban is increasingly resentful of Pakistan’s tight control and
irksome demands, which the group views as serving pan-Islamic, or Pakistani, agendas
rather than a nationalist Afghan goal. Complicating Pakistan’s problems is a splintered
and isolated Taliban leadership that wields limited influence over a fragmented
rank and file exhibiting a geographical and generational disconnect with its
leaders. Without centralised direction, local Taliban commanders increasingly
follow their own path, often at variance with one another. This has been
evident in the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, which has seen Taliban leaders
such as Agha Jan Mutasim engage with the Afghan government’s High Peace
Council, while other Taliban spokespersons repudiate the dialogue. In
re-establishing control over their riven organisation, Taliban leaders cannot
be seen as puppets of the reviled Pakistani government and will necessarily present
themselves as proud Afghan nationalists who have outlasted and outfought yet
another superpower.

Pakistan’s options are further circumscribed by its home-grown Taliban,
the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Islamabad’s wish to reach political
accommodation with jihadi groups is eroding with each new TTP outrage, such as
the execution in February of twenty-three captured Pakistani paramilitary
soldiers. Yet military operations in North Waziristan, the TTP’s tribal
redoubt, seem certain to generate blowback across the Pakistani heartland,
given the group’s close linkages with other extremist groups in the country
and, indeed, with the Afghan Taliban.

Given these dilemmas, it might seem breathtakingly ambitious for Pakistan’s
leaders simultaneously to plan to expand the country’s influence into
Afghanistan and to stir up a hornet’s nest for India in Kashmir. Yet Indian
officials note that the Pakistani military and intelligence establishments have
never lacked audacity; where they go wrong – as they did in sending tribal
fighters into Kashmir in 1947 and 1965, and in infiltrating Kargil in 1999 – is
in missing the strategic consequences of clever tactical ploys. If India is
correct in surmising Islamabad’s intentions, it now seems poised to overreach
itself yet again.

For New Delhi, that is small consolation. While a substantial intensification
of the armed insurgency in Kashmir appears unlikely, India might be forced onto
the back foot by enhanced infiltration along the LoC. At the same time, within
Kashmir, relatively minor incidents have the potential to flare into further
widespread public protests. Yet, on the positive side, a more stable and
confident government after India’s elections in May could provide a fillip to
peace by initiating a credible political dialogue with Kashmiri separatists and
revoking the AFSPA, overruling the military which would prefer it to remain in
force throughout 2014. Either way, as the power struggle plays out in
Afghanistan this year, tensions on the LoC look set to continue to ebb and
flow.

4 comments:

my post is in regards to your previous 4 posts about HBR and India's road to Afghanistan; todays topic

Here are my observations with regards to China

1. To counter China in Ladakh as well as Pak in Kashmir fast track the construction of all weather rail-road link between Leh and Kargil, this will be pretty much strait line and covered (out of range of Pakistani or Chinese artillery), also it will allow faster troop & weapon movement

2. Develop the Nyoma airbase to handle heavy lift aircrafts and helicopters and a all weather road link to leh, also station a 2 mountain brigades in Nyoma

Here are my observations with regards to Pakistan

1. Time now has come for India to step up support for the Balwaristan movement and start supporting the Shia populace of Gilgit Baltistan who are being purged systematically

2. Make sure that Afghanistan keeps up the pressure on its eastern borders and efforts are made to link up the Wakhan corridor with Kargil, but a catch (that road will traverse through China controlled Saksgam valley on the Trans Karakoram tract that was illegally ceded to China by Pakistan)

3. Urgently develop the Chah Bahar port in Iran to make Pakistan as irrlevant as only access to sea for central asian nations